Your turf will have been grown for 18 months in large fields which have been regularly mown, rolled and fed. It will contain a mixture of grasses which will ensure it looks dense and green all year round.

The ideal thing for your grass is that it never knows it has left the field!

In an ideal world the management of the turf will be as intense as it was before it was delivered to you, if this is not possible then the following advice should help.

Do not allow the turf to get too long before you mow it, starting to mow too late and taking too much length off the turf in one go is a common cause of brown and bare patches in new turf, particularly if the ground under the turf is not flat.

Good preparation of the soil before laying the turf will ensure that all the roots are in contact with the soil and growth will be even. Lumps and hollows will lead to scalped patches where the mower grounds on the lumps and long grass in the dips. This gives an uneven appearance to the grass.

Once the turf has been down for a week lift a corner to see if it has rooted, if you can’t lift the corner then it is OK to start mowing. In the winter it takes longer to root and may be as much as 2-3 weeks, in summer we have known it to take as little as 3-4 days!

When you first mow the turf set the blades on the mower high and just take a third of the height off the turf, leave it 3 or 4 days and remove another third and follow this pattern until the grass is the height you want it to be.

We would never recommend cutting it right down like a bowling pitch, this is done with special fine seed mixtures and trying it with your lawn will stress the grass plants and lead to them dying off in hot weather. You might be lucky and it will recover over the winter but you do face the prospect of losing patches of the lawn all together.